You've taken a good first step by creating a club. In a lot of areas, clubs are not interested in new technologies and have shown no interest in D-Star, so D-Star repeaters have been put up by one or a few individuals using their own money.
Now your club is faced with the age-old issues of recruiting and retaining members. I would guess, whatever is being done along those lines in your club, more could be done. Try to find someone who really enjoys that sort of thing, and make that person in charge of Membership. Have actual meetings or breakfasts from time to time so people can meet each other. Obviously welcoming and including people on the air will help. Just looking at your site, I can't find a way to join the club and pay dues online. My suggestion would be that a link to a page like that should be visible when your home page comes up. At the very bottom, you have a comment about donations should be sent to one of the members. PayPal is so much easier for people in a hurry who want to help. Little things like that can make a big difference. But the most important step you can take is to make recruitment and new members a priority, and put a very gregarious person in charge of that. Good luck. Jim - K5XZ ----- Original Message ----- From: bea...@aol.com To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, June 08, 2009 6:15 AM Subject: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Surf the Web Wirelessly via D-Star! The word that I object to the most, in this thread is the word "free". KJ4ACN has been on the Gateway, since November of 2007. A very small percentage of the repeater users have bothered to join the club and financially support the Gateway. "Ham Radio is supposed to be free", I have heard several times. Well, maybe Amateur Radio is supposed to be free, but internet access is not free, at least for the West Central Florida D Star Club. Financing the Gateway, long term, just does not seem feasible, for us. I had conversations, at Dayton, with several other Trustees/Club Presidents. The financial scenario at KJ4ACN seems to be quite common. I foresee repeaters dropping off the Gateway, due to lack of funding for internet access. Anybody got any creative solutions? Buddy WB4OMG West Central Florida D Star Club President/KJ4ACN Trustee **************Download the AOL Classifieds Toolbar for local deals at your fingertips. (http://toolbar.aol.com/aolclassifieds/download.html?ncid=emlcntusdown00000004) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
